Day 6: Biggest, Brightest and Best

Overview of today’s agenda: Guggenheim Museum, American Museum of Natural History and Broadway Show: South Pacific

Once again taking advantage of the rainy weather I saw a couple more of New York’s museums on ‘Museum Mile’ on 5th Avenue. The first stop was the Guggenheim Museum. After seeing the amazing exterior of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, this museum’s exterior was a little plain. The inside was also a little disappointing as most of the galleries were closed because they were installing a new Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit. There was a few of the permanent collections open to viewing. But to see the entire museum took less than an hour. 

Next I took a crosstown bus to see the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). It is true that NYC is a city of superlatives. As I have been touring around it seems that all the guides have pointed out the biggest, best and features of the city. But nowhere was this more obvious than in the AMNH. Inside I saw a very large cross section of a 1000 year old tree, a huge model of blue whale and a huge meteorite. It was having the Calgary Science Centre, the ROM and the Biodome all under one roof. You could spend days inside this museum.

Personally the most interesting sections for me were the space exhibits and the Planetarium. Particularly interesting was the photos taken by astronauts on the moon. The dinosaurs were also quite neat – like a mini Royal Tyrell Museum.

I left the AMNH a bit early to get tickets for an evening performance of South Pacific. There are many ways to get discounted Broadway tickets – lotteries, online purchase and rush tickets. Depending on the show different methods are better. For South Pacific they were selling student rush tickets two hours before the show for $20 in the mezzanine. There is always a chance they may sell out of the tickets so it’s important to line up early if you really want to see the show.

My first experience with Broadway was pretty fantastic! Even from the mezz you could see the entire stage and most facial expressions of the cast. South Pacific was a great revival show with enough action, romance and comic relief to please any audience.